Panel says professor at A&M plagiarized

Committee suggests she be dismissed

Published 5:30 am, Friday, July 6, 2001

A Texas A&M University committee has recommended that a sociology professor be fired for plagiarism and falsifying data.

The professor, Mary Zey, has accused other A&M professors of plagiarizing her work for several years. The recently concluded investigation was launched in 1999 after Zey's latest allegations against two colleagues, Harland Prechel and John Boies.

The committee exonerated Prechel and Boies of any wrongdoing. Prechel is a sociology professor at A&M. Boies was denied tenure as a sociology professor in 1998 and now works for the U.S. Census Bureau in Washington.

The dozens of charges and countercharges, which started in 1995 and involved five professors, have led some observers to dub A&M's sociology department "Peyton Place" for its soap-opera-like qualities.

"The (committee) regrets to condemn Dr. Zey, a colleague who is valued and esteemed among some faculty at this university, and elsewhere," the 51-page report said. "The (committee) concluded that the actions of Dr. Zey constituted not mere sloppiness of scholarship or a single incidence of plagiarism, but a protracted pattern of misconduct in research or scholarship."

A&M provost Ron Douglas said he will likely decide within a week what action, if any, to take against Zey. He said the university has not yet decided whether any such action would be made public before the appeal process is finished, because it is a personnel matter.

"The university takes scientific misconduct very seriously and hence approaches its resolution very carefully," Douglas said.

He said Zey would be able to appeal any decision to A&M President Ray Bowen. Zey has taught at A&M since 1982.

Zey, Prechel and Boies could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The committee that investigated the matter was composed of four A&M professors. It was convened in October after a preliminary committee concluded that there was "sufficient evidence" to warrant an investigation.

Zey accused Prechel and Boies in 1999 of plagiarizing a paper she published in 1998 that analyzed structural trends in corporate ownership. Prechel and Boies published a similar paper in 1998 in another publication.

The committee concluded that Zey could not back up her claims that she had started work on her 1998 paper years before, and also said she changed the titles of earlier grants to make them appear more related to that paper. It concluded that Prechel could verify he had previously worked on the topic and that Boies' role was analyzing data.

The committee said Prechel was able to substantiate the data he published, but that Zey falsified data and copied it from a draft of the paper published by Prechel and Boies.

The committee said the National Science Foundation also will investigate the claims because some of the work in question was funded by federal grants.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Boies, Prechel and two other A&M professors first accused Zey of plagiarizing their work in 1995.

A university committee concluded in 1996 that Zey committed an "honest error" by using prose similar to that of the other professors without attributing it to them.

Boies has said he believes he was denied tenure because he blew the whistle on Zey. A university panel concluded that Zey and her husband, Steve Murdock, also an A&M professor, voted to deny Boies tenure "in retaliation" for his charges, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported in 1999. Zey and her husband denied those claims.